The National Revolution and
the Peasant Movement
(Introduction to Collected Writings
on the Peasant Problem)¹
(September 1, 1926)

The peasant problem is the central problem of the national revolution. If the
peasants do not rise up and join and support the national revolution, the national
revolution cannot succeed. If we do not speedily create a peasant movement, the
peasant problem cannot be solved. If the peasant problem is not properly solved
in the context of the present revolutionary movement, the peasants will not
support this revolution. Right down to the present day, there are still a number of
people, even within the revolutionary party, who do not understand these points.
They do not understand that the greatest adversary of revolution in an economically backward semicolony is the feudal-patriarchal class (the landlord class) in
the villages. In an economically backward semicolony, the imperialists outside
the country, and the ruling class within, rely entirely on the unstinting support
that the landlord class gives them in their attempt to carry out the oppression and
exploitation of the objects of their oppression and exploitation in that territory,
who are primarily the peasants. Otherwise, they would be unable to carry out

This article was published in Nongmin yundong (an organ of the Peasant Department of
the Guomindang Central Executive Committee), No. 8, September 21, 1926. We have
translated it from that version, which is conveniently reprinted in Mao Zedong ji, Vol. 1,
pp. 175-79.
1. The earliest available text of this essay, published in Nongmin yundong, is followed
by an editorial note reading as follows: "This is the introduction written by Comrade Mao
to Nongmin wenti congkan (Collected Writings on the Peasant Problem). We regard this as
very relevant to the national revolution, and it is specially included here for the reference
of the average comrade working with the peasant movement. As for the content of this
series, readers wishing to examine it are invited to purchase copies from the Guoguang
Shuju. We add this further introductory comment to the writer's explanatory note." This
four-volume series of materials compiled by the Peasant Movement Training Institute was
originally for use only within the Institute, and for distribution to peasant movement
activists. Information regarding some of the items included is given by Mao in the concluding section of the present article. Regarding the reprinting of this series in the spring of
1927 for a wider public, see below, the letter by Mao published on March 14, 1927, and
the notes thereto.